Zdeňka Břízová

* 1937

  • “Some farmers just kept on resisting. They didn't want to hand over their land and not even their cattle, but there was no other way. As they, as I remember, had to meet these quotas which were quite upstrung. Quotas imposed on just everything. And my husband's mother, she had to meet quotas on milk production, and when a cow – or all the cows – wouldn't give milk, she had to solve it by giving some eggs or something. As you had to do this, there were quotas and if you failed to meet them, you had to meet them indirectly. That's something I remember quite well.”

  • “Yes, people were hiding or they were running for cover. And the Germans, they would shoot you at sight. I remember my mother's brother being wounded, his hand was paralyzed as a result, they gave him a newsstand after the war. So he sold cigarettes, that's something I remember. And there was a school, and a post office right next to it, and there was someone hiding at the local priest'S house. So they would come to the presbytery and shoot our priest. As my mother and my father told me.”

  • “As I remember, there were partisans hiding in those woods. And after the Germans found them, they would bring them to our village, to our school in Trhová Kamenice. There they would interrogate them, so we couldn't go to school for maybe two weeks. And as I remember, our Mrs Director would visit classes, speaking German, she would speak German all the time. And then there was the May uprising. Both my mother's brothers were in Germany and our father was in Pilsen, and we were so afraid something would happen to him, that he wouldn't return to us, but he came back after the war. And this May uprising I remember quite well, as we moved to our grandmother's house, to the village of Zubří. And when the Germans were going through the village they would shoot anyone they saw. And there were those Jews as well. And they would take them all to the Castle and then to Theresienstadt and not a single one would return.”

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    Červená Voda, 07.10.2021

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    délka: 50:03
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They took our fields, our grasslands and our cattle

In Červená Voda on 7 October 2021
In Červená Voda on 7 October 2021
zdroj: Fotografie z natáčení v Červené Vodě 7. 10. 2021

Zdeňka Břízová was born on 6 April 1937 in the village of Prosetín in the Chrudim region. As a child she witnessed fighting in her native village. The Germans were interrogating partisans right in the school she was attending and they also shot a priest at the local presbytery. After the war, her father had been working as a stone mason, her mother served as an assistant cook. They lived quite modestly. In 1955, she married an independent farmer. During the ‚collectivization‘, their farm had been taken over by the communists. Before that, she witnessed the poor getting even poorer due to the monetary reform. Both she and her husband left for the town of Albeř, South Bohemia, to work there. Her husband got a job at a local machine tractor station, while the witness had been working at a textile factory. At that time, she gave birth to her two daughters. In 1965, they moved to the village of Těchonín in Eastern Bohemia. Both she and her husband had been working in a local textile factory. In 1988, her husband died in a car accident. In 1995, she moved to the village of Hoštějn, so she could be closer to her daughter. Since 2018, she had been living in a St. Zdislava Nursing Home in Červená voda, being visited by both her daughters, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren on a regular basis.